


[In Which There Is Girl Talk]

by Exal



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Gen, Male My Unit | Reflet | Robin, My Unit not named Robin, Named Deimos, Post-Canon, Pregnancy, Reveal, Talking, Wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 07:00:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29995626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Exal/pseuds/Exal
Summary: "Why isn't Morgan named Anna?" Postwar, post-marriage, after everything has settled down, this is how Deimos and Anna decide how to name their new child.
Relationships: Anna/My Unit | Reflet | Robin, Chrom/Soiree | Sully
Kudos: 7





	[In Which There Is Girl Talk]

###  **Conversation 8 [In which there is girl talk]**

It was called a “Secret Shop,” but the name was clearly more facetious than literal. It was outside of the main drag of Ylisse Castle Town, just outside the city walls, out in the open and clearly, if humbly, labeled as a 'SHOP.' Sully supposed no one had ever gotten rich by being invisible.

It had taken Sully two hours to reach the shop from the castle, even by horse. It wasn't a long trip, by any means: Sully had made similar trips in less than half the time. However, it seemed the Queen of Ylisse, Her Majesty Sully of House Sahira, couldn't ride through her own town without getting all sorts of unwanted attention. 

...Not wholly unappreciated attention, however. She was a fine Queen who could ride through her kingdom and only receive adoration, thanks, and mild applause. Children had admired her horse, mothers had praised she and her Lord Husband for policies allowing them to live peacefully and without hunger, and soldiers had asked her for advice. She had even stopped to chat with Councilpersons Malkavia and Marcellus, who had been out together. It was always nice to talk with with members of the royal council outside the pressures of court.

With all the distractions, it was nearly dusk by the time Sully had made it to the Secret Shop.

Sully hopped smoothly off her horse, then led her to the hitching post. After tying her mare to the post, Sully brushed off a little road dust from her traveling tunic and entered the shop.

A bell tinkled above Sully's head as she opened the door. A familiar perky voice shouted from a back storeroom, “Be right there!”

“No hurry,” replied Sully, looking around. The shop was as cluttered as it always was, but it was never actually in disarray. The cloaks were over there, the swords in a pile over there; everything was in its place, even if it seemed chaotic. A talented shopkeep could find whatever she or a customer needed in a moment.

And said talented shopkeep now emerged from her back room, her ponytail slightly askew, a half-crumpled piece of vellum in one hand. She smiled widely. “Thought that was you, Sully!” Anna said. She dipped one knee and hip downward in mild mockery of a curtsy. “Is there something Her Majesty the Queen requires?”

Despite the fact that their husbands were the best of friends, Sully and Anna had rarely actually spoken over the course of Ylisse's extended military campaigns. The full extent of their interaction had merely been short greetings when Sully had business with her or need of Anna's mercantile talents. The two had finally become friends during the Shepherds' trip to a beachlike Outrealm, bonding over, of all the silly things, a shared tendency to dreadfully freckle in the sun.

Sully wouldn't say the merchant was a close friend, but they still shared tea when Anna needed to visit the castle, and they could safely stave off boredom with small talk when their husbands went off by themselves. Sully was just proud she was finally to the point where she could distinguish Anna from any of her sisters.

“Heya, Anna,” said Sully, “is Deimos around?”

Anna's expression changed from a genuine smile to the automatic, resting smile designed to put customers at ease. “Nope,” she said with cheer, her eyes returning to her work, “he's out investigating a cave or ruin or something. I didn't ask too much.”

“Okay, good, 'cause—” Sully's mind caught up with her mouth. “Wait, Deimos is out _spelunking_?”

Anna rolled her eyes and her smile became a smirk. “I know, right?”

“When he lived in the castle, he didn't even leave the library for meals,” said Sully. “Now you're telling me that he's not only outside but wandering through caverns and shit?”

Anna cocked her hip. “He has this weird idea that ruin-exploring is gonna take off at some point in the future. While I adore getting into a new thing in its infancy, I don't exactly think there's profit in wandering through tombs no one's cared about enough to loot.” Anna sighed fondly. “Aaaaanyway, did you want to talk to him about something? He should be back pretty soon.”

“No, actually, I wanted to talk to you. You got somewhere to sit around here?”

“Oh, right! Of course,” Anna said, and swiftly cleared several boxes of books off a small table in the corner, and bundled up some curtains that Sully now saw were covering a pair of chairs. Sully sat down across from Anna. Twilight sun streamed through the window and across the table.

Anna took a coin out of a pouch and flicked it so it spun on the table. “So what's up?”

Sully took a deep breath. Serious talk was not her strong suit at all. “Okay, first, weird question, but...Morgan isn't visiting, is she?” 

Anna put a finger on her chin in puzzlement. “No, she's still wandering about with your daughter, isn't she? I haven't seen her...since the war ended...plus a couple weeks?”

Sully sighed again. Well, there went that possibility. She hadn't really thought it would be the case, but it would've made her life a hell of a lot easier. “Okay. Then…Okay, so you remember the whole scrying thing we have going, to make sure the...future Lucina and Kjelle are okay?”

“Yeah, Deimos described it to me once or thrice. That creepy Plegian gal has that spell that lets you know where people are, right?”

Sully nodded. Every couple of months, Chrom went to Tharja or Tharja came to them to get a magical update on Lucina's location. “Yeah,” said Sully, “and you know we had to have the spell find Morgan, right?”

“Hmm? Oh, right, 'cause when you had the spell locate Lucina, it would always say, 'she's right over there, in the nursery.' The spell could only locate _this_ world's Lucina, right?” Sully nodded. Anna started boredly rolling her coin across her knuckles. “And since Morgan and Lucina are traveling together-slash-dating, you've just been using the spell to locate Morgan, and that's where Lucina is, and so on—sorry, Sully, but where are you going with this?”

“Right.” Sully took a deep breath. “Anna, we had the scrying done today. And the spell said...that Morgan was right here, in this building.”

Anna's coin hit the floor with a clatter. “Wait, what?”

“You're pregnant, Anna.”

Anna paused for a moment, then chuckled. “...I can't be pregnant,” she said lightly.

Sully couldn't help but smirk. “Oh, yeah? Why not?”

“Well, I mean...you know...” Anna flailed one of her hands in the air. “I just...” Her flailing stopped, but she shook her head. “I'm not pregnant. The spell made a mistake.”

Sully shook her head and replied, “We tried it three times. Woulda tried it a fourth, if Tharja hadn't gotten sick of us. ...Also, she'd probably curse you for saying she made a mistake.”

Anna raised a finger in the air and almost said something, then stopped. She opened and closed her mouth a few times. “That...” she finally said, but then immediately trailed off. Anna put her hands on her knees and ran a finger down her leg for a moment. She spoke again, softly though. “...Wow.”

Anna was silent for another beat, then said, “I...I need to process this for a moment.”

“Look,” said Sully, “I can head out, if you need to be alone.” She began to stand.

“Ohhhh, no, no, no,” said Anna, standing up, “This is your fault. You're processing this with me.” Without another word, Anna climbed up on some crates and reached into the dark corner atop them.

“What are you—” Sully started.

“Found it!” announced Anna, and she hopped down from her perch. A dusty bottle of dark red wine was in her hand.

“'Maelora's Valentian Reserve,'” said Anna, “The year's worn off the bottle, which is why I got it for a song, but obviously it's old enough to be _Valentian_ , so it's...probably really good.” Anna produced a dagger from her cloak and stabbed the cork, extracting a bit of cork from the bottle before gripping the cork between her teeth and pulling the cork the rest of the way with a pop!

Anna grabbed a wineglass from a low shelf and filled it, and had almost taken her first sip before she said, “Whoa, sorry, did you want a glass too?”

Sully was far more of an ale woman than a wine one, but she knew better than to refuse a generous offer, particularly of alcohol. “Hell yeah, I do.”

Anna smiled and retrieved another wineglass. She filled it up and sat down back in her chair, promptly taking a long swig from her own glass.

“Hey,” she said, casually slumping in her chair, “is this where you'd thought you'd be in life?”

“I didn't think I'd be the freakin' queen, if that's what you're asking,” responded Sully. Anna barked in laughter as Sully drank her wine. It tasted just like the stuff she had to drink at state parties, but she wasn't an expert. “I mean, hell, for a while I was downright afraid I was just going to grow up to be a fancy-pants lady or something. You know I used to be Lissa's lady-in-waiting, when she was a kid?”

Anna smirked. “You?” she asked, taking another sip of wine.

“I know, right? My family didn't want me in battle, he just wanted me to be a polite little noble daughter. So they wrestled me into the puffiest dress we had, forced etiquette classes down my throat, and had me play royal attendant to Her Floofiness the Princess.”

Sully exhaled. Now came the shitty part of the the story. She was happy she had alcohol. “...And then my brothers died and I was suddenly the next in line to be the in charge of whole damn house. And we're a family of soldiers going back forever; there hasn't been a Lord or Lady of House Sahira that wasn't also high up in the army for generations. I was in basic training before Gil and Urn were in the ground. 'Course, I had been training in secret for two years by then, but...” Sully took another drink. “Anyway, I always thought I'd just end up being Lady Sahira, halving my time between training the greenies and doing...y'know, whatever the crap noble heads do.”

“And now you're Queen,” said Anna.

“And now I'm Queen. I can't believe Chrom married me either, sometimes. I woulda thought it would be nothing but balls and uncomfortable dresses, and, sure, I gotta attend dinners and sit in on council sessions and all that crap, but otherwise I don't answer to no one, you know? I can ride up to Ferox if I need to or I can fight right alongside our squads if I want. I'm the queen and all, but I can still be a knight. I don't have to be anyone I don't wanna!”

Anna nodded vaguely, apparently concentrating on her wineglass. The conversation stalled. Eventually, Sully spoke up. “So, uh, why did you ask, anyway? What did you think you were gonna be when you were a kid?”

Anna leaned back in her chair, swishing her wine. “You come from that noble family of yours, right? So you've got all that history to live up to, right?”

“Well, yeah,” said Sully, “I have an uncle who's always going on about the 'hundreds of years of Sahiras' that we have to honor.”

“My family goes back even farther than yours,” said Anna, and she took a sip of her wine. “When I was younger, my sisters and I were pretty normal, I guess, but we were always being taught to continue the family business. Mom says I could count change before I could walk. My sisters and I learned salesmanship and how to defend ourselves and everything else was secondary. Sure, we knew one or two of us would eventually have to go off and get married and continue the Anna line and all, but there was no pressure there or anything.”

Anna put the glass to her lips as if to take another drink, but she broke off the movement and resumed talking. “And I didn't think it was going to be _me_ who went off and fell in love, no way. My sister Anna is this complete romantic, and my other sister Anna has basically been dating this guy in the Feroxi guard since she was thirteen. I was perfectly happy just running my shop and my little locksmith-for-hire business on the side. When I joined up with you, I didn't even realize you were the Exalt's hand-picked elite army.”

Anna took another sip of wine, but still had a bit left; Sully was finished with her glass. At her gesture, Anna happily refilled Sully's wineglass. “I barely even noticed Deimos at first?” Anna asked. “I stuck around long enough to see Gangrel fall, went to your wedding, and then I headed back to my shop. I thought I'd never see a Shepherd again.

“And then? Two years later, I'm making a routine delivery, and the guy I'm delivering the stuff to takes one look at me and says, 'Oh, Anna! It's great to see you again.' Two years, and Deimos recognized me right away.”

“He is pretty amazing,” said Sully with a smirk. “though, you know, we were getting the Shepherds back together at that point anyway.”

“Well, yeah,” replied Anna, “but he still remembered me! It took me a moment to realize who he was myself. He once told me he just remembered my bear charm, and _I_ don't even remember I have that half the time.” Anna drained the last of the wine from her glass. “You couldn't meet a guy like Deimos in a month of clearance sales. I was doomed from the start.”

Sully smiled. Her eyes moved to Anna's neck, which was conspicuous through its bareness. “Hey, where's your necklace?” Sully asked.

Anna's hand flew to her throat, but it was a purely automatic reaction. she answered, “Oh, the clasp broke last week and I haven't gotten around to getting it fixed. It's in my jewelry box.” The necklace had been a birthday present from Deimos to Anna, once upon a time. Sully would've hated to see it lost. “That necklace...” said Anna, fingers dancing near her collarbone, “was the first thing in my life I've ever looked at without thinking about its price. I still don't know how much Deimos plunked down for it—too much, probably. But the moment he gave me that necklace all I cared about was keeping it with me forever.”

“And you proposed to the poor bastard right then and there,” commented Sully, “I've heard this story before.”

Anna laughed. “Yeah, I know.” Her smile slowly faded as she stared down at her glass. She poured a bit of wine into it, but only filled it half the way. “Did I ever thank you? For finding him?”

“Huh?” asked Sully. Had she missed something?

“After he...well...died. Did I ever thank you and Chrom for bringing him back?”

Sully scratched her nose. “He would've found his way here no matter what. Chrom and me, we just got him here a little faster.”

“That was the hardest year of my life, y'know,” said Anna. “It hurt like nothing I'd ever felt before to watch him vanish. I knew that was the right thing to do. We merchants are good at keeping the long game in mind. But...he still left me behind. And sure, I had Morgan, for a little while anyway, and you and Mom and my sisters were there to help but...” Anna took a drink from her glass. “I remember days of sitting behind the counter, thinking I'd give away everything I owned if I could just have him back. I remember hoping against hope I was pregnant, just so...I don't know, just so I hadn't lost him forever.”

It's a joke I used to make that I still loved money a little bit more than I loved him...It turned out...I didn't.” Anna looked nearly ready to cry.

She jumped as Sully slammed her glass firmly down on the table. The table rattled and threatened to tip over, and a bit of wine sloshed onto Sully's glove. “Look, I'm all for a pity party, and some kinda hurt-slash-comfort action if that's what you need. But you're past all that, right? You're gonna have a baby! A little girl or boy or something-or-other running around. I thought you'd be happy.” She rolled her eyes. “Dammit, be happy!”

Anna stared at her friend for a moment, then, just when Sully was starting to feel guilty about yelling and started to apologize, Anna grinned a pinched, restrained grin. The grin widened quickly, and now Anna was giggling. Her giggles swiftly transformed into actual guffaws. Leaning back in her chair, Sully drank her wine and let Anna laugh it out.

“Hah...” said Anna, after the fit had passed, “I think the wine's getting to me. Sorry about all that, love. I didn't mean to get all emotional.”

“Yeah, well, you shoulda seen me when I found out I was pregnant,” replied Sully, “I was kinda a wreck.” Sully saw a glimmer in Anna's eyes, the kind she only got when she saw something valuable, or something exploitable. She adored embarrassing stories. Sully, with all the social dexterity she had, changed the subject. “So, hey, question I've always had. Why isn't Morgan named Anna?”

“Oh!” said Anna, leaning back. “Funny thing. She is.”

“What, and 'Morgan' is just a nickname?”

“Nope. 'Morgan Anna of Ylisse' is her full name. Lucina told me once. ...I think Morgan knew, but just forgot to mention it or something.”

“'Morgan Anna?'” asked Sully.

“Apparently having two given names is a pretty big thing in parts of Valm. I figure I must have wanted to give her a different name without drawing yon eternal enmity of my family. Besides, you know Morgan. That girl's a lot of things, but she's not an Anna.”

“You think you'd be able to tell if a baby's a...an Anna?”

Anna winked. “If you saw me as an infant, you'd know me in a second. If you haven't noticed, family resemblance runs strong in us.”

“What about this one?” said Sully, finishing her second glass. “Do you think she'll be an Anna?”

Anna looked into her wine. “Huh. You know what?” she put the glass down, “I really don't. Being raised to be a merchant was fine for me...but it's not for everybody.” She put a hand on her abdomen. “I don't think it'll be for this one.” She laughed again. “Maybe she won't even be a girl! Now that would be impossible!”

Sully smirked. “If there's one thing Deimos can do, it's the impossible.”

“I do try my hardest,” said a voice from behind Sully.

Sully turned and saw Deimos entering the shop. “Speak of the devil!” she snorted happily. Deimos was a little worse for wear—his combed back violet hair was rather mussed, and his robes were covered in dirt—but he looked mostly unharmed.

“Hey, baby!” said Anna. She picked up her glass of wine, twirled into Deimos's arms and pressed the glass into his hand.

“Well!” chuckled Deimos, “Nice to see you too, dear.” He took a sip of wine. “Hm, that's good. Ah! And hello, Sully. How are you doing?”

“Heya, champ,” said Sully. She stood, nearly knocking over a pile of books. “I was just headed out.”

“Oh, really?” asked Deimos. “You can stay for dinner.”

“Nope!” chirped Anna, “It's just you and me tonight, hon. We've got something special to talk about.”

Deimos's expression changed to one of confusion. “Special?”

“But first, dinner,” said Anna happily, heading for the back. “I got some tuna at a bargain! Come on, you can tell me if you found anything valuable in that cave you were looting as I cook!” She stopped, realizing something. “Oh, have a nice ride home, Sully! See ya!”

“Bye,” Sully said at Anna's vanishing ponytail. She headed for the door. “Nice seein' ya, Deimos. See you at the next council session, right?”

“Sully,” said Deimos warily, “what's going on?”

Sully laughed. “Ha! Good luck, hot stuff,” she said, punching Deimos in the shoulder. She headed out of the shop with a grin. For being one of the smartest people she knew, Deimos sure could be dumb sometimes.


End file.
